


Behind The Cover

by lavenderfrost



Category: Podfic Fandom
Genre: Cover Art, Other, Podfic Cover Art
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-05-24 14:11:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6156175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderfrost/pseuds/lavenderfrost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assorted ramblings of a cover artist with delusions of podficcing. ^^;;  To be added to as I feel like it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How They Roar Their Light

Starting off with a cover for a podfic that will never see the light of day, since the author never responded to the permission request.  Sorry! ^^;;  I wanted to talk about it though, because I actually do like this one and this is the only way I'll get to share it.

This is one that was almost entirely done according to specific requests from Ada.  I normally like a little more freedom to do my own thing when making covers for people, since I figure that if you're asking me to make a cover, that involves a certain amount of trust in my taste and skills to begin with.  I was intrigued by the request she made, though, and figured I owed it to her, since I'm the one who drove her crazy by foisting the fic onto her in the first place. >.>;;

Her requests were to base the cover on Van Gogh paintings, since the fic was a Book Thief/Doctor Who x-over where Death comes for and talks to Vincent Van Gogh, with specific mentions of using one of his skies, one of his self-portraits, and his smoking skeleton painting.

_Left To Right: Wheat Field With A Lark, 1887; Skull Of A Skeleton With A Burning Cigarette, 1885-86; Self-Portrait, Summer 1887_

Simplicity and placement/layout are the keys to what make this one notable, I think.

I kept it simple partly because I'm a big fan of simplicity in all aspects of design to begin with, but also because I wanted the Van Gogh elements to speak for themselves.  This is showcasing a man who was a master at his craft; his work is beautiful enough that he doesn't need any help from a plebe like me in making things look interesting.

In terms of placement, I'm a fan of [asymmetry](http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/10/18/creating-off-center-balance-using-asymmetry-in-web-design/) in layouts.  Coming up with things that are just a bit off-kilter, but still visually harmonious and balanced.  In this case, things are not quite centered, and not completely off to one of the sides or corners either.  I don't always do asymmetrical layouts, since you ultimately have to tailor your ideas to what fits the project you're working on that moment, but there's so much area that gets overlooked in a canvas/image, and it's incredibly freeing to play around with it.

The layout is set up in a way that puts the fic title in the [visual center](http://blog.thepapermillstore.com/designing-using-visual-center/) of the cover, because I wanted it to be part of the main focal point of the image.  I wanted the title design to be evocative of shouting, and the word "roar" is done in a font that is based on Van Gogh's handwriting.

_Left To Right: Books, Alexander Rodchenko, 1924; Clip art of a man shouting; P22 Vincent, myfonts.com_  
_Strong diagonal elements are commonly used in visual depictions of someone yelling because they stand out and grab a viewer's attention._

The other font is a basic [serif font](http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-1/type-anatomy/type-classifications) because again - simplicity rules the day.  While I do use fancy fonts, I find it best to balance them out with very simple ones.  Fancy type is best used in moderation in any design.  The colors for the text were sampled directly from the paintings.  They were chosen for the sake of contrast _(against the blue/white parts of the background)_ , consistency _(colors that are already in the image)_ , and readability.  _(A good rule of thumb is that contrast + simplicity = readability.)_

This cover was also notable for me because it's one that I've never had the urge to go mess with after finishing it.  It's fairly common for me to finish a cover, then think of things I want to change later.  When it's for my own podfics, I'll sometimes sneak in the changes under the radar.  When it's a cover I did for a collab or for someone else's podfic, I'll usually just deal with it by twitching in silence.  ^^;;


	2. In A Grove

  
Lunchee asked me to make some covers for her Lunchee'ween 2015 series, and this is probably my favorite out of the bunch.  You can find the podfic [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5115740), she does an incredible reading of it.  I'm always blown away by her performance and character voices, so having her ask for a cover was pretty flattering.  ^^;;  She didn't really give me any specific requests to use as guidelines and I already had an idea when she mentioned the story, so I just ran with what I wanted to do.  The overall concept is fairly obvious - In A Grove is the story of an interrogation about a dead body found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto, hence the blood spatter and bamboo plants.    
  
Part of the idea for this was to use Japanese _[wabi-sabi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi)_ aesthetics; which include the appreciation of asymmetry, simplicity _(both right up my alley already)_ , irregularity, and imperfection.  I tried to incorporate it via the off-center placement of the bamboo and kinda-weird placement of the blood spatters with nothing of any real prominence in the [visual center](http://blog.thepapermillstore.com/designing-using-visual-center/) of the image, combined with the stark simplicity of the design that has no texture or variation in shades - it's solid black, solid white, and solid red, with no spectrum between.

  
_"Pine Trees", Hasegawa Tohaku, 1580_  
_An example of traditional Japanese art illustrating the wabi-sabi aesthetic._

Another part of the idea was to scratch an itch I had been having for a while to make a podfic cover that plays around with [ambiguous figure/ground relationships](http://daphne.palomar.edu/design/fandg.html), making it not entirely clear what part of the image is the background and what part is the object.  The ambiguity in this case is shown with the bamboo - the background is black, except where parts of the bamboo are too.  In instances like that, the black stops being simply the background and becomes part of the figure itself.

_ _

_Left to Right:_ _"My Wife And My Mother-In-Law" Ely Hill, 1915; "Rubin Vase" Edgar Rubin, 1915; Kanizsa Triangle  
Figure/Ground Relationships make up a part of a set of design theory principles that derive from a set of psychological theories called [_Gestalt_](http://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design/gestalt-theory-10134960) \- "unified whole."  The theories deal with how the mind percieves, interprets, and organizes information - including visuals._

The text is as simple as possible in this one - just a plain white [serif font](http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-1/type-anatomy/type-classifications) in the corner.  I didn't want anything that grabbed too much attention from the blood and bamboo, so that was more than enough to suffice.  The color choices are about as obvious as the design, I think.  Black and white are considered neutral colors and they set off the red, with the color symbolism being of the 2x4-to-the-head variety.  There is no subtext here, only text.  The story is about violence and death, and red is the color of blood. 

I'm generally pretty satisfied with this one.  Sometimes I think maybe the smaller blood spatters look a bit awkward, but it frankly looks even more awkward without them and imperfection is part of the whole _wabi-sabi_ thing to begin with, so I've let it go.  It's not something that really bothers me enough to want to change it.


	3. The One Where Sid And Darcy Wake Up Hitched

Ah, the [crack-tastic Hockey/Marvel crossover not!fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4687325) Kalakirya and I not!podded on Skype after keyboard-smashing incoherently at each other on Twitter over a random fic craving I was having.  Because why the fuck not?  I still go back and listen to that one fairly regularly - something that's rare for me, since I don't usually enjoy listening to my own stuff.  ^^;;

My initial idea for this was actually to find photos of Sidney Crosby and Kat-Dennings-as-Darcy-Lewis and combine them with a photo of nighttime at the Strip, because _duh_.  ^^;;  I didn't go with it in the end, though - initially because I just never found the right combination of photos, then because I had the idea that it'd be cool to do a riff on the city's official Welcome sign.

  
_The Welcome sign that the title design is based off of._

The final reason I decided against a Vegas-at-night cover was because I realized that side of Vegas didn't really fit the concept behind the story-line Kalakirya and I giggled our way through in the first place.  The story is a subversion of the woke-up-married trope, after all.  That trope isn't really about the wild nights, it's about the consequences.  It's about waking up hungover and confused and regretting all your life choices _**ever** _ and dreading the hoops you'll have to jump through to fix this mess. 

With that in mind, I decided that the cover should have Vegas in the daytime, when the glitz and the glamour is mostly put away until night falls again and the sunshine feels like it's splitting your skull while roasting you alive and _oh dear God **please** don't let Deadspin or Puck Daddy get hold of this_.  From there, it was simple enough to decide on a photo of the Bellagio fountain with the Eiffel Tower in the background after a quick google image-search.  The Not!Eiffel Tower bit amused me because it's a throw-back to Paris being the City of Love and all that jazz, and while they do end up bros, Sid and Darcy's situation is anything _but_ love. 

The rings were thrown in as another nod to the trope.  You could look at them as simple gold bands with no real personalization to them - like they were bought hastily with no real forethought for Sid and Darcy's ill-advised drunken escapades.  You could also look at them as simple mens'-style rings Sid and Geno exchange at the real wedding after all the madness is done.  In that context, the rings and the city could be symbols of embarrassing missteps that unexpectedly put Sid on the path to the best happy ending he could ever ask for. 

Not too much to say on the technical/design theory side of this one, honestly.  The cover is a mixture of [vector graphics](http://image420.com/what-is-vector-art/) created in Adobe Illustrator and photos incorporated via Photoshop.  The color palette didn't have a whole lot of deliberate planning, either.  I feel like this cover was more about story symbolism than thinking too hard about the design side of it. 

It's also another cover I have little desire to go back and change or update.  I'm perfectly fine with it as-is. :D  



	4. After She Wakes

If you ask any of my friends what fandom they most heavily associate me with, they'll probably answer "Shakespeare."  I'm a weirdo, I've accepted this. The cover makes it pretty obvious what play the fic is about - it's an exploration of what could happen after the Happily Ever AfterTM for the leading _(and only)_ female character for the play.  _(Spoiler Alert: It's **awesome**.)_  
  
This cover is one that I have very mixed feelings about.  It's quite possibly one of my favorites in terms of how the artwork itself came out - since I finished the cover before the actual podfic recording, part of me wonders if it influenced my reading at all.  I had started the project intending to bring out a sense of mischief and a certain amount of cheek with my reading.  Once I finished the cover, my drafts started sounding a lot more wistful and unsure, much like Miranda herself in the painting.  It makes a certain amount of sense, really - in the play, Miranda is the perfect ingenue, having never experienced the world outside of Prospero's island until Ferdinand and Antonio's ship lands upon their shore.  In the fic, the ingenue is forced to make her way and find her place in that world, with no guidance from her father and no really useful advice from her husband either.  
  
This was also a project where I went through at least 2 other ideas that didn't work out before this one.  In my experience, if you want to do well at covers, you need to be flexible and not get too stuck on any idea.  There will be times when you'll need to kill your darlings, step away for a while, and go back to square one.  _(And for all that I lecture people about that, there are still times when I struggle to remember it, myself. ^^;;)_  
  
The whole time that I was running my previous cover ideas into the ground, I'd see this image pop up in my google image searches:

  
_Emma Hart as Miranda, George Romney, 1785-86, oil on canvas_

I always found it striking, but it never really fit into any of the ideas I had at the time.  It took me getting frustrated, scrapping everything, and just doing searches for ANYTHING that looked like it'd make a good cover to go ahead and try working with the image.    
  
It became one of those pieces that seems deceptively simple in the end.  What looks like a mere pink overlay and pasted-in page from the [First Folio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Folio) version of The Tempest actually took a bunch of different adjustment layers getting tweaked over and over; not to mention masks, various color overlays (more than just pink, let me tell you), channel work, strategic blurring and brightening, and other subtle changes that all add up to it becoming what it was in the end.

  
_If you want to draw attention to something and add a sense of depth, one way to do it is to subtly (or not so subtly) brighten the part of the image that's meant to be the[focal point](http://flyeschool.com/content/emphasis-dominance-and-focal-point).  This is because among other things, the eye is drawn to light and color contrasts._

Also - speaking of the [First Folio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Folio), here's the first page of The Tempest:

I put it in because Shakespeare plied his trade in beautiful language.  Much like using Van Gogh paintings for [Ada's cover](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6156175/chapters/14105449), I wanted to use a little bit of the man's own work.

Much as I'm happy with the artwork itself, I did mention mixed feelings about the cover overall.  It comes almost entirely from the typography used in the original.  The word "After" is too large, it crowds the image too much and clashes with Miranda's face for the viewer's attention.  The text overall is too dark. I blame font choice for the most part, though to be fair, that was the best I had at the time that I initially made the cover, and it is a great font. Just not ideal for this project. ^^;;  I've since found something that works much better and snuck the changes in _(not so )_ on the sly...


	5. Seven For A Secret

A short one this time. The [podfic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5107535) is a collection of horror stories about Disney Princesses - it takes their canonical _(Disney canon, anyway)_ tales and twists them into something frightening. The goal, therefore, for this cover was fairly obvious - make a throwback to a lot of the [Renaissance-era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Renaissance) designs for Disney posters, soundtracks, and VHS tapes that fangirls my age _(*cough*)_ grew up owning and loving, with a slightly creepier twist, a la _Into The Woods._

Because this was a horror podfic, I didn't just want the cover to be a simple throwback. I wanted it to be a little fucked up, but in the mostly family-friendly sort of way. The images are all twisted versions of iconic images and motifs from the Disney movies referenced in the podfic. Most are probably fairly obvious - Belle's dead rose, Snow's creepy forest, Cinderella's broken glass slipper, Ariel's crashing waves waiting to drown someone, Rapunzel's hair, and so on.

  
_Your fav iconic disney moments...corrupted._

The bloody handprints on the old gilded leather-bound book is a call-out to the [storybook opening and closing montages](http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Storybook_opening) that are also something of a Disney trademark. Also maybe a vague reference to Jasmine losing a hand, meeting a genie, then becoming the most blood-soaked ruler Agrabah ever had? In my mind, anyway. Take from it what you will.

This was fairly straight-forward on the design side, too. Not everything has to have a complicated design theory backstory behind it, after all.

The coloring for everything is muted, yellowed and browned to emphasize the sense of rot and decay, as well as to help tie all the disparate elements together. It's always tricky doing collage work of different photos and making everything look as if it belongs together - similarity in color helps tie it all together and turn it from "SEE I HAVE PHOTOSHOPPED A THING" to "this is a deliberate arrangement of elements that makes the design work." _(More[gestalt theory](http://daphne.palomar.edu/design/simnprox.html) for you.)_

If I'd change anything, it'd probably be to dull down and age the book lettering a bit more, but I needed it to stand out amongst all the other detail as well, so it's not something that bothers me all that much. 

As I elaborated in my free-talk at the end of the podfic, the omission of all the author's and readers' names was mostly out of necessity - the author was anonymous in the first place and enough podders worked on the project that to include the names and make them legible would have fucked up the design. The "welcome to the wonderful world of disney" thing...I just had to add. I mean, how could I not? Plus, I see it as kind of a callback to the taglines from old Disney movie posters.

So, yeah. Disney, Disney, Disney all the way through. Having fun wreaking havoc with our childhoods was the whole point of the fic, after all. ;)


End file.
